Quote collection
496 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Learning to know anxiety is an adventure which every man has to affront if he would not go to perdition either by not having known anxiety or by sinking under it. He therefore who has leaned rightly to be in anxiety has learned the most important thing."
"The truth is a snare: you cannot have it, without being caught. You cannot have the truth in such a way that you catch it, but only in such a way that it catches you."
"The presence of irony does not necessarily mean that the earnestness is excluded. Only assistant professors assume that."
"To despair over one's sins indicates that sin has become or wants to be internally consistent. It wants nothing to do with the good, does not want to be so weak as to listen occasionally to other talk. No, it insists on listening only to itself, on having dealings only with itself; it closes itself up within itself, indeed, locks itself inside one more inclosure, and protects itself against every attack or pursuit by the good by despairing over sin."
"About as genuine as tea made from a bit of paper which once lay in a drawer beside another piece of paper which had been used to wrap up a few tea leaves from which tea had already been made three times."
"Only one human being recognized as one's neighbour is necessary in order to cure a man of self-love"
"In order to learn true humility (I use this expression to describe the state of mind under discussion), it is good for a person to withdraw from the turmoil of the world (we see that Christ withdrew when the people wanted to proclaim him king as well as when he had to walk the thorny path), for in life either the depressing or the elevating impression is too dominant for a true balance to come about. Here, of course, individuality is very decisive."
"Philosophy is life's dry-nurse, who can take care of us - but not suckle us."
"One can advise comfortably from a safe port."
"Destroy your primitivity, and you will most probably get along well in the world, maybe achieve great success--but Eternity will reject you. Follow up your primitivity, and you will be shipwrecked in temporality, but accepted by Eternity."
"Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, who so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility."
"Geniuses are like thunderstorms: they go against the wind, terrify people, clear the air."
"Prayer is a silent surrendering of everything to God."
"What looks like politics, and imagines itself to be political, will one day unmask itself as a religious movement."
"With respect to physical existence, one needs little, and to the degree that one needs less, the more perfect one is."
"Everyone looks the same to me in a photograph: stupid."
"Hope is a passion for the possible."
"With the daguerreotype, everyone will be able to have their portrait taken . . . and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same."
"A man who cannot seduce men cannot save them either."
"My melancholy is the most faithful sweetheart I have had."